


Visions (Found Kingdom Remix)

by xpityx



Category: His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-05
Updated: 2018-08-05
Packaged: 2019-06-22 02:57:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 442
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15572163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xpityx/pseuds/xpityx
Summary: When Nanda was six her grandmother had told her stories of the great city of Mahabalipuram with it’s seven beautiful temples.





	Visions (Found Kingdom Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Visions](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1149630) by [still_lycoris](https://archiveofourown.org/users/still_lycoris/pseuds/still_lycoris). 
  * In response to a prompt by [still_lycoris](https://archiveofourown.org/users/still_lycoris/pseuds/still_lycoris) in the [remixrevivalmadness2018](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/remixrevivalmadness2018) collection. 



When Nanda was six her grandmother had told her stories of the great city of Mahabalipuram with it’s seven beautiful temples. They were so beautiful that the gods become jealous, and eventually Lord Indra submerged all the temples but one under the ocean. After she often dreamt of swimming among the ruins in the deep, of fishes flashing bright and dolphins singing to her as she swam. Whenever she went to her local swimming pool with her parents she made sure to check for underground cities, her eyes stinging with chlorine.

 

When she was nine, her father had bought her The Chronicles of Narnia, and she had added the back of the wardrobe to places to look for other worlds. She’d had a vague unease that she wasn’t supposed to believe in such things, but even at 22 she still sometimes pushed firmly against the back of a wardrobe in a new room. She’d done it the first time Will had shyly offered her some wardrobe space for when she stayed over. Not when he was in the room, of course, but when she’d been hanging up a shirt that she’d wanted to wear again the next day. Just a quick check, not even fully conscious of what she was doing, to make sure there were no talking animals or evil queens nearby.

 

When she was 24, a cat called Kirjava had spoken to her, and she had resolved to push more firmly at the seams of the world.

 

-

 

On her 90th birthday she awakens to find some sort of gazelle somewhat awkwardly curled on what had been Will’s side of the bed. She sits up by degrees, and wheezes a little once she is upright. It watches her with steady eyes, and she waits for the slow turning of her mind to tell her where she’d seen such a creature before. It’s a Chinkara and she had seen one on a visit to family, she finally decides. She and all her cousins had been taken to the National Zoo in Delhi and she had seen these graceful creatures, known for being both curious and hardy. This was a male, with great S-shaped horns and subtle stripes on its face.

 

“What’s your name?” She asks, even though she already feels knows the shape of it.

 

“Namuchi.” Her daemon replies, his voice as calm as she had imagined it to be.

 

Will and Kirjava had been gone almost a decade, and she had given up hope of ever finding her own lost kingdom and yet here, at the end of her days, she sees she had been carrying it with her all along.

 


End file.
